Irvin Harold Sturm

Irvin Harold Sturm, 95, passed away peacefully on February 22, 2025, at Bay Bluffs Hospice, Harbor Springs, Michigan, with his wife, Joyce M. Sturm, his son, Matthew H. Sturm and his daughter-in-law, Karen L. Craven by his side.

Born in Detroit on November 21, 1929, at the beginning of the Great Depression, Irvin earned a Bachelor’s of Science in Civil Engineering from the University of Detroit in 1952. Following his father’s path, he worked a variety of automotive factory jobs to put himself through school, first at Cavaler Spring Factory and then at the Dodge Main Plant in Hamtramck. Upon graduation he was drafted into the U.S. Army, serving two years active duty as a surveyor with the 29th Engineer Base Topographic Battalion in the Philippines Sulu Archipelago.

Upon returning home to Detroit in 1954, Irvin took a position as a civil engineer for City of Detroit and for the next sixteen years worked at surveying and designing the roadways, bridges and overpasses that comprised Detroit’s nascent mass-transit road system. This eventually became the template for modern freeways built throughout the United States and around the world, an accomplishment that was always a source of professional pride for him.

In 1960 he married Patricia A. Fleetwood, and they had two children, Matthew and Elizabeth. In 1972, they relocated to northern Michigan and settled in Horton Bay near Boyne City, where Irvin headed the Charlevoix County Road Commission.

In 1981, he founded his own professional engineering firm, Northwest Design Group (NDG), building a new standalone headquarters east of Petoskey, overlooking Little Traverse Bay on US-31 across from Petoskey’s East Park, coincidentally one of the many civic design projects NDG created. Irvin was proud of the many successes he and his colleagues had at NDG, creating countless projects all over the state, including more than two-hundred bridge designs, mostly in northern Michigan. Even after retiring and passing NDG to his close friend and partner, Howard Haselschwardt, he continued working part-time until age 84, lending the company and community his broad engineering and leadership experience as a consultant and mentor.

Following Patricia’s passing in 1993 Irvin remarried in 1995, to Joyce Marie Slocum, who survives him. In their more than three decades together they shared lives with their combined families and traveled extensively.

Irvin was an intrepid and curious citizen of the world, visiting his daughter Elizabeth in Australia a total of ten times between 1991 and 2014, and exploring Michigan, Canada, and America’s eastern and western states first with his young family in a pop-up camper, and later with Joyce, in the little RV they called Dolph. He loved the outdoors and was the epitome of the Michigan sportsman, greatly enjoying fishing, boating, canoeing, and camping, and teaching his children to appreciate these things as well. He was also a prolific and enthusiastic writer, chronicling his life and accomplishments, working out exhaustive genealogy charts of his family lineage, and penning dryly humorous fictions and musings he would share with his children and wife under his anagrammatic pseudonym, Virnim Rust.

Irvin was a meticulous craftsman, exacting and precise in his manner, whether drafting, building, writing or speaking, inspiring similar qualities in all who knew, loved, and respected him. A voracious reader, he continually honed his understanding of the world, studying history, mathematics, and literature. He loved books, art and music of all sorts. He adored public libraries and maintained close personal relationships with librarians everywhere he lived and worked. He had passions for photography and golf (both watching and playing) and was a life-long baseball fan, especially of the Detroit Tigers.

Irvin is survived by his wife, Joyce Sturm, of Harbor Springs, Michigan; son Matthew Sturm and wife Karen Craven, of Ann Arbor, Michigan; daughter Elizabeth Tanner and husband Ian Tanner, of Albany, Western Australia; stepdaughter Connie Slocum, of Pellston, Michigan; stepson Todd Slocum, of Pellston, Michigan; and their spouses and children.

A memorial service will be held at 11:30 AM on Wednesday May 7, 2025, at Stutsmanville Chapel of Harbor Springs, MI. A visitation will be held one hour prior to the service. Military honors will proceed after the service on-site at Stutsmanville Chapel. A luncheon will be held after the service at the church. Burial will be held weather permitting at Friendship Township Cemetery at a later date.

Services are in the care of Stone Funeral Home.

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